


Firsts

by unethicalcoffee



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:58:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3999853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unethicalcoffee/pseuds/unethicalcoffee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new Chloe is born and her first steps are in darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firsts

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: depictions of depression and self-harm. categorised with a warning for violence just in case. 
> 
> chloe-centric with a brief mention of max at the end.

The first time Chloe took a knife to her wrist her flesh cried and her eyes bled, and as she hollowed her skin to fill her chest she only grew more empty. Another Chloe whimpered, another Chloe chewed her lip, another Chloe hacked at stone to turn it into something new, something warm, something human. All the old her could do was pray, to dad, to Max, to nothing; all the old her could do was suck blood from her mouth, close her eyes as the new her slaved away, curl numb as she swiped blood red paint from her wounds and gave colour to her face, surgical hands on surgical art, dead, alive, barely breathing. The new Chloe sacrificed the old; the new still prayed, but to gods dead and gone.

 

The first time Chloe choked on a cigarette was the first time in months she could breathe. The new Chloe couldn't breathe the air of the old world, couldn't smell her mother's cooking or her father's cologne, couldn't taste laughter or friendship; she could only breathe smoke, only smell her lungs burn, only taste ruin. The old Chloe breathed creation, the new destruction; the old Chloe was pleasure, the new was pain. The new was out of tune, tightly wound, ever on the precipice of breaking whenever, even gently, she was plucked; the old Chloe had been harmony. In the end, the new Chloe dwelt in fire, where the old Chloe had died.

 

Chloe's first lover was a blank space. The new Chloe came to lurk in the darkness as much as the blinding light, belonged in the stillness of ashes as much as the frenzy of fire. In the night she found more solace in cold, dead embrace than in burning, dying silence; in the night she drowned rage in melancholy, slit throats to kill deafening, silent whispers, smothered desire in physicality. In these moments her revulsion at another writhing body wove snake-like round her neck, expelling her mother and her father, expelling Max and even herself. The new Chloe gave way, but not to the old; the new Chloe was hollow.

 

The first time Chloe underestimated her need to destroy was the last time she ever would. In the presence of ash she seemed almost like a child, a phantom of juvenile glee flitting her delighted wings to and fro, shimmering blue and white in the firelight, a butterfly before a candle. Upon closer inspection, her nails were torn, her eyes lay half dead in shadowy wells and her movements were violent, erratic. She did not flit freely, she was no butterfly; between the old and the new, two dark passengers, her body was shoved, her insides lurched. Chloe was light and dark, the bird as well as its cage; before her, because of her, flames licked at wood at a mesmerising slow quick pace, killing in an instant but with a whisper, not a bang. The Chloe that dwelt in fire became fire, forgetting that flames not only bring destruction, but light.

 

The first time Chloe dies, she remembers the desire to live. For days Max's slow, measured voice and anxious, searching eyes burn into her head, brand her, “saw you actually die”; she remembers, tries to forget, that if she had died she never would have heard that voice again, never would have seen those eyes. The first time Chloe realises she is living a second life, listens to a thirty second prophecy and watches it unfold, she is glad of it. Years ago a new Chloe had been born and to this day she has always walked in darkness; the first time Chloe dies is the first time she realises that someday she might be able to step into the light.


End file.
